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Saturday, October 15, 2011

No. 328: Government-led program to develop three kinds of robots workable in a disaster (October 15, 2011)

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,Science and Technology decided to start developing three kinds of robots
workable in times of disasters like earthquake and tsunami in 2012. The
underlying theme is to develop workable robots in a disaster site. They are a
robot to save afflicted people under the wreckage, a wearable robot helpful to
save afflicted people, and a robot to search afflicted people under water. The
ministry will take the initiative in the project, and local governments and
Fire and Disaster Management Agency will take part in the project from the
R&D stage. The ministry will invest 1.1 billion yen in this five-year
project, and it already appropriated nearly 300 million yen in the budget
request for 2012. Beginning in April 2012, researchers from research agencies,
companies, and universities are scheduled to participate in the project.

The research team will develop a technology
to know the complicated situation inside the wreckage using 3D images and a sensor
technology to search afflicted people in the sea and sludge, while taking their
user-friendliness into consideration. Traditionally, universities take
initiative in developing robots in Japan, and their robots lacks workability in
a disaster site because they tend to place too much emphasis on the technology
itself. As a matter of fact, most robots that played an important role in the
Fukushima disaster were foreign-made robots.